Eines ist sonnenklar: Microsoft wird nach der Veröffentlichung von Windows Vista grosse Veränderungen (organisatorischer wie technischer Natur) über sich ergehen lassen müssen, um die nächsten zehn Jahre – wenn überhaupt – mit der jetzigen Machtstellung zu überleben:

Now Windows has also rewritten their USB stack at least 3 times, with Vista, it might be 4 times, I haven’t taken a look at it yet. But each time they did a rework, and added new functions and fixed up older ones, they had to keep the old api functions around, as they have taken the stance that they can not break backward compatibility due to their stable API viewpoint. They also don’t have access to the code in all of the different drivers, so they can’t fix them up. So now the Windows core has all 3 sets of API functions in it, as they can’t delete things. That means they maintain the old functions, and have to keep them in memory all the time, and it takes up engineering time to handle all of this extra complexity. That’s their business decision to do this, and that’s fine, but with Linux, we didn’t make that decision, and it helps us remain a lot smaller, more stable, and more secure.

Quelle: linux kernel monkey log

Entwickler von Linux – und etwas schwächer auch diejenigen von Apples Mac OS X – „break things“, wo es nötig ist. Dies bedeutet für alle Beteiligten (Peripherie-Hersteller und Endanwender) zwar einen zusätzlichen kurzfristigen Aufwand, längerfristig profitieren aber alle von Neuerungen. „Change is good“!

Dank: Kollege Liechti